New Writing for Children blog and twitter account

Hi everyone! I've decided to find new digs for my stories for kids (beginning reader and middle grade fiction). I want to be published under the name E.J. Krause instead of my full name, which I will continue to use for both my adult and young adult writing. I'd be thrilled if you'd go over and check out The Funtastic Playground. I'll be posting the first 16 chapters of my soon to be released book, Way Over the Line. That's roughly a third of it for you to sample for free.

I also have a new twitter feed: @ejkfuntastic. I'd love for you to follow me on that account.

My Writing--July 5 - July 11

The schedule for last week didn't quite work out for me on the novella I was planning to write. I stalled on it and decided to shelve it for some other time. I've decided "pantsing" (writing without an outline) is simply not for me on longer pieces. I can do it with short stories, but I'll continue to create road maps for my works longer than shorts.

Which brings me to my main goal for this week. I'll be setting up an outline for a middle grade novel--my first attempt at one. It'll be aimed for the 8 to 10 year old readers, as it'll take place in fifth grade. I'm anxious to see how I pull it off. I don't want to say too much about it (my silly superstition of not talking too much about a work in progress before it's done (or mostly done), but it'll be a time-travel piece. Not too ambitious, just the main character going back a couple of days and having to dodge his past self while solving a crime. We'll see if I can pull it off.

I'm also hoping to revise a short story, as well as maybe start writing a new one. I'm going to make it my goal for the rest of the year to write a first draft and ready one for market each month. I've been so focused on my novel (which I'll start revising in August) and flash fiction stories for #fridayflash that I've neglected other short stories. I don't see a problem with having one ready for market each month since I have a few first drafts backlogged, but I'm hoping I'll have the discipline to crank out at least six more first drafts before years end.

On to the blog posts:

Monday: Speculative Fiction Writing Prompt #24 will go up, most likely in the morning. I don't have one picked out yet, but whatever it turns out to be, I hope it's helpful to at least one of you out there.

Wednesday: I'll have two short story reviews. I've already picked out the stories, and they're both science fiction this week. One is from an ezine, while the other is from a podcast. I enjoyed both, and I hope you will as well.

Friday: My #fridayflash story still needs a bit of polishing, but it's pretty much ready to go. Last week's story was a contest entry for a zombie romance, and this week's entry will also be a contest entry, this one with the theme of Happy Birthday. It's for Deanna Schrayer's blog, The Other Side of Deanna, and if you're interested, you can see the rules here. Even if I don't win, I think it's a good story, so it should entertain the readers. That's all that matters in the long run.

Sunday: You'll get another of these posts. Excitement! If you read these, bless you. I basically do them for me, to make me keep myself accountable. Didn't work last week with my planned novella, but sometimes we writers need to know when to cut our losses, too.

Until next time, keep reading and/or writing!

Writing for Children

When I write my stories for adults, I don't really have any interest in writing anything that doesn't have some sort of genre twist, be it horror/paranormal/fantasy/science fiction/or whatnot. You get the idea. I don't like to read straight literary or contemporary work (there are exceptions, of course, but usually not), so therefore I don't like to write stories in non-genre categories. It just doesn't interest me.

I'm finding, however, that when I right for kids, I have no problem leaving out the fantastical element. Depending on the age group--usually the very young--normal everyday things can have the air of the fantastic. A simple story about hats can be a fun thing for me to write--which just so happens to be what I'm working on now. I've sent out two children stories to publishers so far, and one is a picture book/young reader about a brother and sister on a fun treasure hunt that their mother designed, and the other is a very short story about a child looking in a mirror. Neither have my normal genre twists, yet both were quite fun for me to write.

I'm finding that for older children, my genre preference is still shining through. I'm working on a middle grade novel that has plenty of paranormal activity and elements of the fantastic. It's a blast to write. It's much different from the genre stuff I can write for adults because I really have to censor my word usage/visual images. Don't want blood and guts to be flowing all over the place in a story for 10 year olds, while that would be fine in a book for adults. It's a nice new challenge for me.

So I guess the point of my post today is to try something new when you're writing. It'll free up your mind in ways that will create fun new challenges for you. Until next time, keep reading and/or writing.

Writing Goals

It's so important for writers to set goals for themselves. Not just big goals that will take months to complete, like "I will finish my novel this year," or whatever your overall goals are, but small goals that help you keep moving. I think it's important to keep the goals relatively simple and small, or they could overwhelm you and keep you from completing them. I give myself goals each week, and I tape them to the wall right at eye level at my writing desk. This way I always know what I should be working on.

For example, I'm working on a novel, a screenplay, and various stories for children at the moment. My goal this week is to write 5000 words in my novel this week. (I use my word count in Word to track this even though that's not the way to actually count up words in a finished manuscript. It's a great tool for a first draft, though!) For my screenplay I gave myself the goal to complete my beat sheet for my screenplay, which I've already completed this week and have crossed out (a nice feeling to see it gone from the list). For my children's writing, I gave myself the task of coming up with 10 good ideas for stories that I can basically start writing at the drop of a hat. Ideas are a dime a dozen, obviously, but workable ideas are a little more difficult. In addition to these, I have other goals such as watch a movie (for research purposes), read a screenplay, read five short stories, and read 30 pages in a novel each day.

Goals like these keep me focused each day. I know what I should be working on, and I do it. In the past, I'd dilly-dally through my writing without focus, and therefore I got little real work done. With my weekly goals, I'm finding I get actual writing work accomplished. It's a good feeling, and also why I think every writer should use goals, be them daily or weekly. That's it for this week. Until next time, keep reading and/or writing!

Writing for Children

I'm pretty excited. I just finished a first draft of a beginning reader story. I'm going to put it away for a few weeks before I start editing, but I'm just happy that I've finally started writing for kids. It's also neat in that I wrote about 600 words and it is considered a book. Well, assuming I can get it published, right?

I've also started on a few ideas for magazine articles for kids. I don't know the market all that well yet, so I'm going to wait until I can get my hands on a Children Writers Market guide. The ideas are good, I believe, but I want to wait to see about article word count and all that. Small detail, but one that makes the difference between getting published and not.

I have a few ideas for longer books, both middle readers and young adult novels. I'm working on getting the first draft of my adult novel done before I start focusing too much on those, however. In the meantime I may try my hand at a few more beginning reader books. I had a good time writing the one I finished.

That's it for this week. Just wanted to post an update on my writing life for any that were interested. Until next week, keep reading and/or writing.